Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics

About this book

A major surprising new history of New Yorks most famous political machineTammany Hallrevealing beyond the vice and corruption a birthplace of progressive urban politics. For decades history has considered Tammany Hall New Yorks famous political machine shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft crime and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes; Tammanys corruption was real but so was its heretofore forgotten role in protecting marginalized and maligned immigrants in desperate need of a political voice. Irish immigrants arriving in New York during the nineteenth century faced an unrelenting onslaught of hyperbolic nativist propaganda. They were voiceless in a city that proved time and again that real power remained in the hands of the mercantile elite not with a crush of ragged newcomers flooding its streets. Haunted by fresh memories of the horrific Irish potato famine in the old country Irish immigrants had already learned an indelible lesson about the dire consequences of political helplessness. Tammany Hall emerged as a distinct force to support the citys Catholic newcomers courting their votes while acting as a powerful intermediary between them and the Anglo-Saxon Protestant ruling class. In a city that had yet to develop the social services we now expect Tammany often functioned as a rudimentary public welfare system and a champion of crucial social reforms benefiting its constituency including workers compensation prohibitions against child labor and public pensions for widows with children. Tammany figures also fought against attempts to limit immigration and to strip the poor of the only power they hadthe vote. While rescuing Tammany from its maligned legacy Golway hardly ignores Tammanys ugly underbelly from its constituents participation in the bloody Draft Riots of 1863 to its rampant cronyism. However even under occasionally notorious leadership Tammany played a profound and long-ignored role in laying the groundwork for social reform and nurtured the careers of two of New Yorks greatest political figures Al Smith and Robert Wagner. Despite devastating electoral defeats and countless scandals Tammany nonetheless created a formidable political coalition one that eventually made its way into the echelons of FDRs Democratic Party and progressive New Deal agenda. Tracing the events of a tumultuous century Golway shows how mainstream American government began to embrace both Tammanys constituents and its ideals. Machine Made is a revelatory work of revisionist history and a rich multifaceted portrait of roiling New York City politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 8 pages of illustrations